The Art and Science of Happiness

good evening everyone and welcome to the John F Kennedy junor Forum my name is Bahar radi and I am a first year at the college planning to study social studies and Middle Eastern studies and I'm a member of the John F Kennedy Junior Forum committee before we begin please note the exit doors on both the park side and the JFK Street side and in the event of an emergency please walk to the exit closest to you and congregate in the JFK Park and lastly please take a moment to silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming zachi Lani W thank you Bahar and good evening everyone and welcome to the JFK Junior Forum my name is zachi Lani I'm a junior at the college and I'm a member of the JFK Junior Forum committee tonight we are extremely happy no pun intended to have with us Arthur Brooks The Parker Gilbert Montgomery professor of the practice of public and nonprofit leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of man agement practice at the Harvard Business School Professor Brooks is the author of numerous books including build the life you want the Art and Science of getting happier co-authored with the one and only Oprah Winfrey he's a columnist for the Atlantic and host of the podcast the art of Happiness which I encourage everyone here to tune into if you don't already do so and we're also in for a treat because this session will be mo moderated by tar massud who is the Ford Foundation professor of democracy and governance right here at the Harvard Kennedy School so thank you again for joining us for what I'm sure will be a fascinating discussion and without further Ado please help me welcome to the stage Professor Brooks and Professor [Applause] massud all right good evening ladies and gentlemen there's a lot of people here you know that Oprah is not here right I thought we were going to say I'm Oprah so this is this is going to be hard one for me to do because typically when I have a conversation like this it's I try to introduce some tension I try to introduce some disagreement but I've never disagreed with anything Arthur Brooks has ever said or uh written so I'm going to try to do my best to be a tough interviewer but it's going to be hard given that uh you've written such a really great uh book so I want to start by asking uh a question that my fa my late father would have asked you would have seen this book uh build the life you want the Art and Science of getting happier and he said he would have said what is this American obsession with happiness Americans are always talking about happy it's in even in your Declaration of Independence life liberty and the pursuit of happiness you know our purpose on this planet is not to be happy our purpose is to be good our purpose is to serve God you know there's a a movie um that you might have seen the the house of sand and fog and it's about a it's actually quite a tragic movie but about a a a uh IM immigrant Iranian family and the father says to the son at some point I wrote it down he says you know these Americans they have the eyes of small children they're forever looking for the next source of distraction entertainment the sweet taste in the mouth right and that sort of felt like something my father would say so what is my what was my father getting wrong about this American obsession with Happ well your father and everybody's father by the way because you know early in my career I've done a lot of different things in my career I was a professional classical musician for a long time all the way through my 20s so started I I left College when I was 19 I was invited to pursue my Excellence outside the college if you know what I mean when I was 19 and I spent my my whole 20s on the road and my parents called it my Gap decade and and later when I was in my early 30s I decided I was going to make some changes so I went back to college by corespondence this is not the typical path for a Harvard Professor I realized but and but I called my dad after I got my bachelor's degree and I decided to go to graduate school and I said Dad I've decided to change jobs I said really I said yeah I'm going to leave music he said why I mean we've invested so much you've done so much with your life and I said because I'm not happy and there's quiet and he said what makes you so special this is a point that's it's a nontrivial one and and and one that people have asked a lot about you know what is this American obsession with happiness and and every generation thinks that the next generation feels like they're entitled to some amount of Happiness now the wording in the Declaration of Independence is kind of interesting and the way that it came about according to well Tradition at least Thomas Jefferson cribbed most of the Declaration of Independence from the Virginia Declaration of Rights from George Mason but the the Virginia Declaration of Rights called talked about life liberty and the pursuit of property which is a loan idea and then almost certainly Benjamin Franklin convinced Jefferson to put in the pursuit of happiness and the whole idea was this utopian no notion of a of a country of ambitious riffraff which we still are and we're kind of proud of it which is lovely that that you could you could define happiness and then you could go after it with sufficient Freedom with sufficient empowerment so it's not a question of you're entitled to happiness never trust a politician who promises you happiness we're in entitled to understand happiness and go after it we're trying to build a society in which we actually can now that's important because in truth happiness isn't even attainable one of the things I write about a lot of my work is the Neuroscience of emotion that shows that we must the lyic system of the brain produces constant almost constant negative emotions and and we have to have these negative emotions did we had if we didn't we'd be dead in a week and and those that level of negative affect makes pure happiness is impossible you don't want it you don't need it it's bad for you what you want is to understand the nature of what the happiness proposition is all about using the science and ideas such that you can get what my co-author has termed happier that's the goal and that's really what we're talking about here so it's not an obsession with happiness it's an obsession with progress is really what we're talking about here I think would that satisfy your dad so I think it would but what does happiness mean because I I suspect a lot of it hinges on the definition of happiness my father would have thought happiness means a feeling of pleasure right you know and I from reading your book you mean something very different from that in indeed so you know the pursuit of pleasure is not a very dignified basis on which to build a great country I dare say um psychologists and behavioral economists and neuroscientists they define happiness in all sorts of relatively esoteric ways but really what it comes down to is that the happiest people have a combination of three things that they get quite skillful at we call them enjoyment satisfaction and meaning if you're going to be getting happier over the course of your life you're going to attain happier you're going to be in pursuit of enjoyment and satisfaction and meaning and then the next question of course is what are those things so that's the skill the see it's not a feeling this is a very important distinction a very important point if you know if you told me that you're Thanksgiving dinner was the smell of the turkey I would say that's a very disappointing Thanksgiving we're in for but that's when people say that happiness is is the is a feeling that's what they're saying feelings are evidence of Happiness that's all they are and so what you want is actually to find the core macronutrients the protein carbohydrates and fat that actually goes into the happiness itself and those three things really are um looking at the evidence and and understanding the science properly the enjoyment satisfaction and meaning so those are the three things to to to to Define enjoyment is not straightforward by the way that's not the same thing as which your father would appreciate the pursuit of pleasure is a a great way to ruin your life um the you know the old hippie dictum if it feels good do it I remember my father hearing that and saying that's the end of America right as your father would have said too he was kind of right anyway so but the point is that that pleasure is a lyic phenomenon it's a it's a it's an almost animal thing in the same way that that emotions positive and negative are signals nothing more than data about the outside world pleasure is a signal that something is is is likely to help you survive and pass on your genes that's all it is and if you pursue that you're hitting certain parts of the of the lyic system of your brain name namely the ventral stum and the vental tag M area of the brain which are the pleasure centers of your brain you tap those all day long you'll just be an addict is what that comes down to what we want for greater happiness is enjoyment which takes the source of pleasure and adds two things people and memory thus taking the experience of pleasure moving it to the most human part of the brain the Executive Center of the brain the prefrontal cortex of the brain where you can actually remember it and have it be part of your permanent happiness so one one of the ways that I I urge people to remember this is if something can give you pleasure um and and it's addictive which many pleasurable things are don't do it alone that's kind of the rule of thumb if you're doing it alone it's kind of a problem because that's the pursuit of pleasure if you know they don't the Budweiser Corporation anheiser Bush doesn't run any commercials of a guy pounding a 12pack alone in his apartment right it turns out many people use the product that way right but that's a bad way to use the product they have the same guy opening up a bud with his friends and his brother and tapping the beer bottles together and and and what are what is he doing beer plus people plus memory equals enjoyment and that's part of and that's part of happiness is is this a so so so I want to get to the other two components of this but is the is the claim that you're making a claim rooted in in science or is it a claim rooted in some moral code like because I could imagine somebody saying look if it makes you happy what's the difference like if you can just tap the pleasure Center of your brain and be happy and then you know we're all going to die anyways so what what what is the basis on which you are judging that to not be genuine happiness worthy of pursuit entirely it's based on science entirely B now I have I have moral codes yeah um but but but this is a scientific claim there's nobody in history who has ever said my secret to happiness methamphetamine nobody said that and the reason is because all it does is it Taps the ventral tag menal area of the brain over and over and over and over again and it subjugates you it's actually a tyranny to be happier you need sources of pleasure in your life but you need to experience them in conjunction with love relationships and making memory so that they're mediated by the prefrontal cortex that's a scientific explanation so if somebody wants to spend their time gaming right in their parents basement is that and that's what makes them happy do we not believe them people plus memory yeah so gaming plus people plus memory as opposed to gaming alone so there are some people they're gaming against I guess online but they never get married they never meet anybody they're they're in the basement mama has get bringing them TV dinners but are they are they happy the problem is Mom but but but that the truth of the matter is that to understand what that person those people need to do gets us into the second and third components of happiness because it's not just enjoyment either you can't lead a life of pure enjoyment enjoyment is fine but it'll leave you empty and you need satisfaction you need meaning more than anything else yeah yeah do you want to talk about those yeah I doc you know so what what when you talk about meaning like you know I I again I imagine there's a high degree of pluralism in terms of what can give somebody meaning so what do what do you mean when you talk about meaning so meaning um it has a both philosophers and psychologists have seen this in the same way we talk about what's the secret of meaning of life what's the meaning of life and it's it's it's almost a joke question because it's so broad I'm going to go to the Himalayas and I'm going to sit in the foot of a cave and I'm going to ask the Guru what's the meaning of life and he's going to tell me some word or some you know that Illuminating phrase and and all will be well meaning in life really has three parts to it so it's really three questions meaning is about coherence why do things happen the way that they do purpose which is what am I on Earth to do what's my direction and goals and significance which is why is it matter that I'm alive those are the three parts of meaning I have a in my work I actually have created a little quiz to see whether or not somebody has a meaning crisis in their life really a two question exam and the way to pass the exam is to have answers to these questions can I give you the quiz sure do you want to do the quiz do you want to do you want me to do the quiz well it certain of depends on you I mean you're the you're the you're I don't mind I you know so here's here's I'm GNA give you a quiz and having answers is a is is a passing grade okay not having answers or not having real answers is a failing grade now that's still good news by the way because if you don't pass now you know what to look for which is really important okay question number one why are you alive Tark why am I alive because because my parents in 1975 an egg and a sperm no no no no not the biological answer why are you alive cosmically metaphysically why are you alive you know I I mean I'm a Muslim so I mean my answer to that question is inspired by my religious beliefs I believe God you on this because God made me and my role is to be a virtuous person serve uh my fellow man leave this planet better than I found it very solid God made me to serve yeah very solid answer excellent second question so far so good for what would you be willing to give your life on this day on this day my family anything else um you know I would I would be willing to give my life for this country mhm for the Kennedy School no there was a time when I would have answered that question yes but that's right but but now he's got tenure and what are you gonna do that's right excellent excellent but here's the point you find that lots and lots of people don't have answers that they find actually believable to those questions that's good that's really good news because they these are the things to go looking for and when you have to look for you're halfway there yeah I've seen this I mean I've tested my own adult children with this my adult children have to answer these questions it's super fun to be my son as you can imagine or my daughter right it's really super fun yeah but my my I have three and they're 25 23 and 20 and my 25-year-old and 20-year-old super serious super serious students and all that my 23-year-old not a serious student um barely made it through High School barely made it through high school and and and he wasn't even having fun and he didn't have answers to those questions so I said what are you going to do to find your answers to those questions you have to my kids have to write a business plan in their senior year in high school I told you it's not fun and um and he wrote my is my son Carlos and my son Carlos writes a business plan he's a senior in high school I'm going to go to college play some sports no you're not you're rolling me I said you're rolling me I know you're not going to because I'm Carlos I went to college when I wasn't ready and I got bounced almost immediately and I went out and I lived my life and I and I did something it was important and it created some value and I understood who I was and I moved to Spain for a long time and that's where I met my wife and we got married and that's where I started my life really I had to do those things what are you going to do how are you going to find your anwers to the question then he came back with a business plan that was really compelling which was the where he was going to find the answers to his questions he went and worked on a farm in Idaho for a couple of years a Dryland Wheat Farm a real thing it was not a hobby thing it was not uhuh he was mending fences and pulling rocks out of the soil making $9 an hour and then he joined the Marines right he at 19 he joined the Marine Corps and he was a mortman and then a scout sniper in the US Marine Corps and that was a scary job for me and his mom it was not for him he got to blow stuff up was the best thing ever but for me I mean it was like I can't track his phone where's Carlos he's on a field trip I don't know right but now he's 23 two months out of the Marine Corps he's an assistant superintendent at a construction company in Northern Virginia he's married his wife is pregnant and he's got answers to his questions yeah which is I'm alive because God made me to serve same answer as yours I would give my life on this day for my faith and for my family and for my fellow Marines and for the United States of America boom yeah that boy is Happy these are not your answers necessarily they don't have that's not the point they're not my answers necessarily I mean it's like I'm not a marine but man I saw that and it was totally transformational he's a different person than he was when he was in high school and it's because he found the answers to those questions that's incredibly Illuminating into the soul yeah do you think that we as a country now are less able to find those answers do you think people of our parents generation had had more ready access to those answers than our generation does and our children's generation yes absolutely this is one of the biggest things that I find I find that people are rootless that they don't they're not encouraged to think about what they would give their life for I think that we're encouraged to think that my life and me and me me and the Psycho Drama that is my ordinary life is the most important thing and I think it's a big problem quite frankly because the truth is you will every single one of us will be called to give our lives you know and what are you going to I would give my life to not be able to hang on for one more single second given Medical Science that's that's not good that's not the best I will probably never be called to give my life for a particular cause but man I want to know what it is and that information is Illuminating about what it actually means to be a person and one of the great reasons that United States has been in in a in a secular happiness decline for the past 30 years is because people are less likely to know the meaning of their lives so so what happened to get us to that state why are we less likely to know the meaning of Our Lives now than we were 20 30 40 50 years ago the answer is that the way that we find the answers to those questions has to do with the institutions of meaning now the institutions of meaning are time in Memorial these are not American inventions quite the contrary but what you find in the science of happiness is that the happiest people have habits now I could you know this is what I do for a living I could give you a thousand habits I could tell you whether or not broccoli or asparagus brings you more happiness but it would be marginal and trivial at best what we need to understand are what are the biggies what are the what's the happiness 401 k plan what are the things that we need to make an investment in every single day each one of us that will be the institutions of meaning such that we know the answers to these questions and we know what those habits are we the habits are very simple they're only four and these are the things that when you look at it these are the things that people invest in every day who are the happiest people now happiness is only 25% under your direct control but these are the things that also systematically improve your circumstances they're also they help you to affect your the genetics of your happiness which day by day is about 50% of your mood as it turns out so those are the four happiness habits I realize I'm getting kind of a buildup here so I might as well tell you what those happiness habits are Faith Family friendship and work those are the four habits now that could be misinterpreted right you could misinterpret that as me saying my Catholic faith which brings me to my point there's a brochure under all your seats no I'm kidding so the um oops I like where' they go weird you know um when I say faith that's just a that's a that's a a a a handy way for me to talk about Transcendence Transcendence is a focus on things bigger than our everyday lives you are not wired none of us is wired Mother Nature doesn't want us to think about something outside the individual Psycho Drama We Are evolved to be focused on me me me me my lunch my job my class my commute my sandwich my money me it's just so boring it's just so tedious and yet you can't stop thinking about it unless you zoom out unless you get small so my friend daker Kelner who teaches at at Berkeley he's one of the great happiness experts and daker has a book called awe a we a and it's all about zooming out on life and marveling at something there's lots of ways to do that but you need a system for doing that day by day every day for some people that's studying the stoic philosophers I've done a lot but you know the way I talk about happiness as you've pointed out is pretty stoic at least in a classical sense some people they prefer to walk in nature before da without devices each day without devices is very important um some people they they analyze the fugues of Johan Sebastian Bach and and Marvel at that some people they have a a traditional meditation practice you do vasana meditation to metacognitively understand the nature of your life and some people like you and me we practice the Faith of Our Youth you got to do something you got to do something you have to have a practice that where you get little because if you're too big you're going to be miserable is the bottom line that's number one okay second is family which is the mystical relationships that are most intense and that you didn't choose and that God knows you wouldn't have chosen and so so many cases I mean it's tough right I mean it's like a family relationships are tricky one in six Americans is not talking to a family member because of politics today that is insanity why because we're being kind of bullied and coerced into hating people in our own families at the behest of somebody on television it's craziness there's one reason of schism with your family that's abuse and political differen of opinion not abuse very important for us to keep in mind and the other thing that's worth pointing out is I've had this convers with so many people again and again they come back from Thanksgiving break and it's like H Aunt Marge she wouldn't stop talking about Trump or whatever right I said I got it I got it I got it I got it yet you don't see eye to eye with ant Mar that's for sure if you had a problem and you called thatt Marge at 3:00 a.m. would she pick up yeah that's all you need to know that's really all you need to know who will take the 3:00 a.m. phone call the person who is mystically related to you for reasons that that you don't understand and she doesn't understand you must not lose that that's number two third is friendship you know I work with leaders all the time because it's you know the Center for Public leadership is what we do and I have the privilege of working with political leaders and Business Leaders and they're the lonliest people I've ever met they're Lonely People they're they're part of the loneliness epidemic they're surrounded by people all day long and they're like I don't know I just don't connect I have lots of friends and I say real friends or deal friends every one of us knows the difference between real and deal that's the real R&D that matters MH you need more real and not so many deal in your lives like a lot of people here I mean we've got this great group of people from the Kennedy School from all all over Harvard we're very very privileged to be moving into significant leadership positions but the downside of that is that we will be isolated and lonely that's just the nature of the game it's one of the things I talk about with my class at the at the business school school I teach a class called leadership and happiness we talk about why leaders are so very lonely we can talk about that if we want but the bottom line is that they are and so the hygiene of Happiness requires that you have more real and less deal and you can't leave that up to chance you have to do the work last is is work and work really has only two parts to it that matter it's not money and it's not position and it's not title and it's not power and no no no no no it's not above or below average income it's it's not having a degree from the Kennedy School believe it or not no it's really only two things the belief that you're earning your success and the belief that you're serving other people those are the two things that will significantly inflect the joy that you get in your work and will give you significant and ongoing Joy from your job now earned success means you believe that you're creating value with your life and it's being recognized and and acknowledged very important that's why leaders in the workplace are so critically important because if you're beavering away in obscurity it will be dissatisfying to you this is pretty obvious this is one of the reasons that government work can be so frustrating sometimes because they don't have earned success systems that work very well sometimes and so it's one of the things I talk about with public servant what are you going to do Etc I did a thing for a thousand members of the state department on Friday and this is what I was focusing on they need to earn their success you can't do it with money how are you going to do it Etc and the second is service service to other people look we're we're people are made to love people are made to serve and only when they can see the people that they're serving and understand the value they're creating in other people's lives that they're lifting other people up that they're lightening the load for somebody I mean think about it you and me you know they it's frustrating sometimes you know that what we do for a living sometimes it's frustrating but then when you talk to a student who's really been touched by what's happened and they understand what you were talking about and it's it's lightened their load in some way then it's completely satisfying and you love your job on that day those are the true forms of compensation yeah so so you know this extraordinary I mean you know what do you say though to somebody so I want to touch on each of these um you know what do you say to somebody who says look I have a very strong sense of what my life is about I have a very strong sense of you know the justice that I want to see in the world Etc and Aunt Marge just doesn't believe the things that I believe I can't Overlook it just because we have this familial connection you say to somebody like you don't need to overlook it yeah you can love somebody without overlooking it you don't have to pretend something is not there to actually love another person you know it's I grew up in a family where I'm the only one who thinks politically the way that I do they thought I was dropped on my head a lot or something right I mean look I think about it I I grew up in Seattle Washington my father was a professor my mother was an artist what do you think their politics are were right and that weren't those weren't my politics I was the only one I was the only one who's kind of like rah rah capitalism hooray right they're like what's wrong with him right what's wrong I one time I was experimenting with dangerous free enterprise ideas in my 20s and uh and I was and I was back in Seattle with I was cooking dinner with my mom it's Christmas time was cooking dinner we're in the kitchen alone you know and she's being really quiet which is making me very uncomfortable if you knew my mom you'd be like that's not right and finally said Mom something on your mind she sayses your father and I were worried about you I want you to tell me the truth I'll love you either way have you been voting for [Laughter] Republicans you get the idea but they were great parents yeah they taught me that we're all equal dignity no exceptions that we're all sisters and brothers everything that I know I got from them all the things I love I got from them they were great great parents and by the way they were right on a lot of stuff politically I just don't know what yet I mean it's you know this is the thing you know I'm I'm I'm trying to expand my own mind constantly because and I'm sure I'm wrong and all sorts of things and they were right and that's not the point the point is I love them I see the world a little bit differently who cares and it made for some interesting dinnertime conversations yeah I I want to make sure that we have time for questions but you know the the the the fourth habit that the habit of work yeah you you there what would you say to somebody who says look I'm generally on board with the framework here that we're trying to achieve enjoyment satisfaction meaning but maybe the way to do that is to just look at work as a very small part of your life that ensures that you're able to afford the necessities of life and you derive those things enjoyment satisfaction meaning from the friends from the family from the faith right is that an incomplete life it is it is it's an unnecessarily incomplete life because the truth is that not everybody has to be a success addicted self- objectifying workaholic I'm looking at you anyway so I'm looking at me I mean this is what we do right I don't actually even recommend that you do need a balanced life there are lots and lots of people where they they they live they don't live to work they work to live that's really really good but you still need to earn your success and and you need to serve other people through that I was doing a television show the other day and I was working with the audience like the live studio audience of a television show and one of the people stood up and he said I'm fly frustrated with my work because you know I work you know 40 hours a week and and I in a company and I'm sit in a cubicle and I don't think my work matters I mean it's I'm kind of a cog and a machine it doesn't matter you know I'm working for this company and they don't even know I exist and what should I do and the answer I gave is at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon go to the break room and and get a cup of coffee and bring it to the person in the next cubicle and say you look like you could use a fresh cup of coffee and look at the look on the person's face this is not a complete answer to everything that's wrong in every job but the truth of the matter is everybody can lighten somebody's load over the course of what we're doing and that's incredibly important whether you're working for money or taking care of your children at home or you're a volunteer you're retired you can do that no matter what and you can endow this thing that you're doing with Incredible significance by making it focused on somebody else I want to this this extraordinary and I could we could talk so much more about this but I wanted to pull on the thread that you introduced a little bit earlier which was about sort of the the state of happiness in America right and what we you know so so you know I understand from what you were saying that you know happiness in America is at a lowb right and presumably it's because some of these habits have have declined and I guess the question is what can we do to is the is the answer that everybody needs to read this book or is there some institutional change yeah yeah it's it's it's all about the book folks no the uh somebody asked me the other day what did you what did you learn from Oprah Winfrey and the answer was how to sell books so the um that's not true that's right it's the uh sort of anyway um so the data are unambigous ous and discouraging about happiness in America we found that happiness started to decline in about 1990 at the general level and has inched downward for the past 30 years 34 years at this point with some periodic down blasts never up blasts all down blasts now the reason sort there there was a climate problem and a weather problem is what we have for for for happiness the climate is has to do with the fact that all of the four happiness habits are in Decline Faith Family friends and work and the at the attitudes that we have toward work the the likelihood of people being religious or spiritual or even vaguely philosophical these are in Decline family life is in dramatic decline for the for the things I talked about earlier but also the fact that family formation is going south in a very fast and very big way and and people have fewer friends you're about three times as likely now as opposed to 1990 to say that there that nobody knows me well we have a happiness epidemic our our Surgeon General Vic Murphy says that this is the big biggest Public Health crisis in America is the loneliness epidemic so and these things and we can turn these things around but we have to pay attention to these things as Leaders we need to be talking about these things we need to be practicing these things in our own lives and and sharing our best practices with other people with confidence and with joy and love and then of course there's the storms the the weather problem of Happiness which you know 2008 2009 there's a major downdraft in happiness and increase in anxiety and depression and at first I thought it was the financial crisis right because people are coming out of college and couldn't find jobs that's wrong that's when social media went on everybody's devices that's what happened and it was especially acute for women and girls between about 15 and 25 and now it's spreading throughout the population that we see the problems that actually come from the isolation now we know the neurophysiology about why this is happening we know that the neuropeptide of oxytocin is woefully insufficient when you substitute social media mediated relationships for in person eye contact and touch but that was the first storm the second storm uh that we often hear about is the is is the Corona virus where you know we found that 6 months into the lockdowns which are just terrible for about 93% of the population about 7% thought it was actually kind of okay you know but dogs hated it cats loved it or something I don't know it was but it was pretty Grim for most people 6 months into the lockdowns symptoms of clinical depression of identifiable diagnosable clinical depression quadruple and they haven't fallen they haven't fallen because a lot of people haven't gotten their social chops back a lot of people haven't really gone back a lot of people made decisions that permanently detached them from the relationships that they have in their life this has to do with oxytocin but just the basics of connection with other human beings and the third which has been a weather pattern that's persisted now for 10 years is politics quite frankly we've been increasing ly encouraged by leaders in this country that we need to not just disagree with but to hate people who disagree with us leaders in politics leaders in media leaders on campus are telling people that they should hate and cancel and a and and avoid cast out people who disagree with him politically that is insanity the Buddha said that when you hate somebody it's like picking up a hot coal with your bare hand to throw at another person who gets burned worse and and it's an empirical regularity that the more that you hate the more that you're encouraged to Hate by the malignant narcissistic leaders in our society today you're their product anybody on your side encouraging you to hate is using you and profiting from you on this campus or in Washington DC or any place else and I'll say it to anybody at this point because we got to get our world back and we're the only ones who are going to get it by standing up to the malignant bully being narcissists on our side whatever our side happens to be wow that's a arousing um it's depressing in that you know you're right that there are there there seem to be more of these types of personalities than you know uh there were but it it feels like we are more susceptible to them because of the climate problem right so you know because of the decline of the of Faith Family Friends work but I I I I don't know that I could explain why you think those things have declined right well we have found as an empirical regularity that they have been in Decline but what caused that my question that's a that's a contested question that's a mystery for a lot of people that our culture is systematically denigrating faith that is downgrading it that to say it's the it's the it's it's the the the world view of the ignorant which has increasingly been the case at least for traditional religious faith and of course what happens then is that people will adopt Cults like politics politics is a cult in America today it's where you get your system of meaning you a sense of in group identity it's where you get your sense of morality you get the sense of who the good people are and the bad people are and and so they'll take that in instead under the circumstances family life has been basically under mainstream cultural attack for a long time the idea of stable happy families the basis of any society and you don't have to be politically on one side or the other to recognize that and yet the idea that we that that it's an Antiquated it's an Antiquated model for the way Society should be should be organized that's a big problem for happiness friendship well I don't know I mean again friendship is endogenous with social media obviously I mean when you're when you're friend what are my friends I don't know there people on Facebook I've never met sorry not friends it's just a word it's a word that was adopted by the industry good luck with that that's actually not true and the more that we mediate relationships in a way that doesn't have any eye contact and touch the greater that loneliness is going to rise and so all these things have plausible both cultural and technological reasons for them that we see yeah okay I I could uh go on with you but I uh will not leave this room alive if I don't allow people to ask you uh questions so I think we have some mics some mic uh one over there one up there you know so uh line yourself up at the mics and then I will I will call on you uh and please ask a question as C inly as uh as possible and you mean you mean put your protest statement in the form of a question yes put it in the form of a question and with the brevity for which Harvard people are uh famous the world over so we'll start over here okay wonderful um hi I'm Lucy I'm a senior at the college studying sociology in the history of science thank you for coming yeah thank you both for being here I also want to say you both have very stylish socks thanks that while you're talking thank you um when that was it I good night ladies and gentlemen yeah when you were discussing the meaning crisis quiz you mentioned that there's only two ways that someone can fail they either don't have answers to those two questions or they don't have real answers to those two questions and I'm curious what are some common examples of not real answers or how we can internally recognize whether our answers to those questions are truly genuine yeah for sure so why why am I alive the biological answer to that is not a meaningful answer to to that that's a that's a and that's very very common why am I liive because you know and and by the way this is as old as the Hills philosophically this is the essence and existence conundrum so you know forever the whole idea was that your existence that your essence preceded Your Existence the meaning of life preceded it and you had to discover it and embrace it well you know the whole world of 19th century and 20th Century existentialism turned that on his head which is to say that that Essence that that existence precedes essence you have to Invent Yourself that's a very dangerous way of thinking when it right or not you have to decide yourself whether when it comes to happiness and worst of all is the nihilistic understanding that there is no Essence that there actually isn't any Essence so that's error number two or let's say problem number two is the belief that there is no meaning so number one is just a mechanical understanding of meaning the second is a is a is a belief that there is no meaning the third way that we get this wrong is to give the answers that we think people want us to hear if you you don't if you wouldn't die for your faith but you say you would there's a real problem because you're living under relatively false pretenses or very false pretenses if you wouldn't die for your family or your country but you say you would because you feel pressured into it then you're living a a pretense quite frankly those are the three ways that we get those answers wrong thank you for that beautiful question yeah but there must be a wrong answer to the question like in other words an answer that is deeply felt yeah that is sincere but that you would objectively say that's not a good that's not a good thing to die for well I would say that there are bad answers but they're not wrong answers I'm kind of a relativist and this is the only part of my life where I think I am I have heard all kinds of answers to that that I I I object to morally but that's not my point that's not my point I know a lot of people have a lot of meaning in their life and I wish they had a different meaning of their life I really wish they did different problem we're talking about what leads to their sense of fulfillment and happiness not what leads to a better world different set of issues right but that I I think you are interested in what leads to a better world when I was reading this book I was thinking there's a little trick that Arthur is playing on us because he's saying here's the way to get happy but what he's really trying to say is here's the way to be good and useful yeah generally speaking the general rule is being good and useful will make you happy being selfish won't the whole point focus on others serve the world be a good person it's a really really good strategy and and there's lots of practical implications to this by the way if you're feeling lonely the number one best way for you to stop feeling lonely is go find somebody who's lonely and keep them company that's a single best way to do it so what I recommend to my MBA students phenomenal all my MBA students are in the second semester of their second year they're all going forth they're all going out to take their first jobs and they a lot of them are going to places they've never been before they going to San Francisco they never live San Francisco New York they're going to be lonely so the key is to pretend you've been in that City for 10 years act like you've been in that City for 10 years and do what somebody who's an Oldtimer would do go find somebody who's new and and say you probably would hey can I help you out you want to go or you want to come over or have a dinner party or start a book club or whatever it happens to be because you're acting as if you weren't lonely but really what you're is you're serving other people and that's the secret to almost everything I've done lots of experiments earlier in my career when I was doing more more conventional academic work experiments on on charitable giving this is really how I got my tenure originally was on on research on the behav on charitable giving behaviors and you find that giving makes you healthy happy rich and literally it even makes you better looking in the eyes of other people you know these these great experiments that show that that these experiments that will have you know two sets of psychologists in different locations and couples will come into the laboratory and and they'll they'll say to one member of the couple um I'm going to I'm going to give you a pocket full of change and you're going to walk with your partner down to that other building and you're going to get interviewed when you get there that's the whole experiment they don't know what it's all about when they're halfway there uh a homeless person comes wandering up a path toward them and stops them and says do you have any change one person has changed as part of the experiment of course the homeless person is is involved in the experiment and then he makes the decision he or she makes the decision they go on to the next set of psychologists who ask the question H how much did you support the homeless person with change and then he turns to the partner and says how attractive do you find him right now or her right now and it turns out that your partner finds you more physically attractive if she or he has just witnessed you being more generous with a stranger news you can use that's I'll I'll try that um go ahead please hi oh y hi thank you so much for chatting today thanks I have a question about the methodology and data that you use to collect this it sounds like you're studing a lot of studies how long are they are and can you talk a little bit about such just subjective I know that you've defined happiness but must be difficult in self-reporting all of these different things can you talk us through the methodology and data and the studies and their length yeah thank you I love that Kennedy School question it makes me happy the um it's really great uh like I don't get that usually and that's important um so studies of happiness and so a million different studies of happiness and they have all different sorts of methodologies longitudinal data cross-sectional data experimental data treatment and control experiments but they all rely on one thing and this is I think the just to your question is how do they measure happiness that's the methodology how do they measure happiness this was a big controversy for a long time because like how happy are you not that useful I mean the General Social Survey which is the most comprehensive source of of General Social data in the United States it goes all the way back to 1972 every year or every second year when they do the when they feel the service survey asks um all things consider how happy are you about your life and the choices are not too happy somewhat happy and very happy it's okay just to get kind of a snapshot the best questions the way that they ask it they they look at large samples they ask people anonymously you can't answer happiness questions in front of your spouse because you will lie um and and then they ask to compare yourself to other people this is the best way that and this has been psychometrically validated against more sophisticated measures of blood cortisol levels of you know third- party validation of how happy you are you know when people are ask when people are asked about you um a lot of different ways of doing it what you find is you say something like this all things considered not this moment in your life so it's not too contaminated by your current mood or how you slept or what you ate for breakfast think of the happiest person you've ever met that's a 10 and think of the unhappiest person you've ever met that's a one all things considered in your life what's your number it turns out that's incredibly stable across large groups of people and and quite validated you know the construct has been validated in just thousands of studies at this point if it hadn't been I wouldn't trust it but it actually has been and so I I feel pretty confident using those data um in my own research and and Reporting on good studies that use those measures as well it's very interesting I mean I think it's culturally I I I remember once when I was and I'll stop talking about my dad I remember once when I was a kid my dad said to me uh Tark how are you and it was my first year I just come back from my first year of boarding school and I was like I'm great and he's like great like what only God is great how can you think so I I wonder if across culturally you ask some people are you happy like alhamdulillah praise be to God but they're not going to answer the question well that's a very important point that you're making you know we always get these United Nations data and cross country data that tell us about the happiest countries it's all nonsense you can't believe it because different people answer it in different countries under different cultural circumstances in different ways and they even translate the word for happiness differently now that said the United Nations has this happiness day coming up International happiness day coming up and the world happiness Summit I'm going to keyote the world happiness Summit and I'm going to go to London and I'm going to say don't trust these indices and it's going to be like you know a skunk at the Garden Party trust me because they they spent you know several million dollars coming up with an index that doesn't hold water and they're going to tell us once again that Denmark is the happiest country so we should all be social Democrats T we should all do that it wouldn't be great because if we had trains that were clean then we would all be happy or something like that you can't believe it there's nothing wrong with Denmark Denmark is awesome but there's a reason my grandparents left Denmark because they were ambitious Riff Raff you get my point they wanted to be one of you if you're from the United States and even if you're not they wanted to be an immigrant at least temporarily like you that's an important thing we self- select into an environment and some even believe that there's a genetic proclivity to think about happiness in a particular way so when you ask Norwegians and Danes and swedes and fins and you know people from Iceland What happiness means that I was talk about contentment I don't want contentment I want Adventure I want intellectual Adventure I want ideas and heresy and danger that's why I'm here that's why I do what I do you get the point you know there's a word in Danish that my grandfather used to use Huga some Of You' heard of it h y g g Huga it means kind of the Cozy conviviality of the comfort of friends on a comfortable couch or something like that right it's like a paragraph yeah I don't want it I don't want it I don't want take you can keep your Huga I want this this is really what I'm all about and now my point is I've I've lectured on this in Russia and they're like 9% are say they're happy I was like what's wrong with you guys they're like it's bad luck to say you're happy right right I've lectured on this in Latin America 70% of people say they're happy are you really that happy it's like you say you're happy here it's kind of bad luck to say you're not happy well you can't get a non-contaminated sample across countries when you get these kinds of biases is the bottom line yeah yeah um okay question over here was your father happy I think he was very I think he had all of these things that you talk about he had his happiness hygiene on point yes on point great absolutely that's great yes thank you so much for the talk uh my question is is it harder to be happy when you're intelligent and especially in a sense of a critical intelligence because you mention institution giving meaning so the second part is in first part intelligence second part is so because like if you question the face for instance if you brought up in a in a religious environment then you're going to question that face if you brought up in an family that's where the army or the country is really important you're going to question that because you're critical and because you want to think for yourself then is it harder for you to be happy if you're going to have a critical mind smart people to be happy is it hard as must brilliant I because you're mess that's right that's a very good question and also it's if your intelligence leads you to question the status quo an institution you meant institution giving meanings if you question the in right right for sure okay so the answer is that it's that some researchers it's a contested question some researchers have found that there's a moderate increase in happiness that increase as we increase cognitive horsepower up to a certain point and then happiness starts to go down again okay there's a curve a linear relationship sorry you're on the wrong side of the on the wrong side of the happiness laugher curve is basically or something like that um and and why is that for probably the reasons that we're talking about here it's actually easier to negotiate life in a very and increasingly complex world as you have more gifts under the circumstances which by the way can also include your education and a lot of that goes into the you know what what would manufactured up into these into these measures natural or otherwise and after a certain point what you find is it starts to get in the way of of a certain uh a a certain amount of life now that said even if you have the you know the greatest intellectual gifts ever if you have your happiness diet on point you can do incredibly well you know this is why you know my my students at Harvard Business School are definitely on that part of the happiness curve on that part of and and they can be incredibly happy if they're paying attention not to pleasure but to enjoyment for satisfaction if they're not thinking about have more have more have more but want less want less want less and meaning if we can actually learn to answer these questions that is not the world of one intellectual group or another we all have to be subject to the same we're all subject to the same set of rules and circumstances we can all actually get happier thank you for that we'll go over here hi my name's is this on hi my name's Thomas thank you so much for your time today uh most of what you shared really resonates with me but what I feel like is missing from the conversation and what my question relates to is the role of policy in enabling or inhibiting happiness more specifically my question is how can we ensure that happiness is not a personal self-help project solely solely for the privileged but more importantly a product of structur structural conditions that promote a higher standard of living for all working people put slightly differently to what extent is happiness determined by individual versus systemic action thank you great question and we're in a policy School um you know I I suffered through a PhD in public policy so I've given that a lot of thought as you can imagine it's a very astute question and there's an answer that's counterintuitive to that here's how I found the answer to this or I got on the trail of the answer to this I was in Denmark making a film about happiness and uh I was speaking to the speaker of the Danish house right and I went to him and he's a Social Democrat and I said everybody knows that this is the the happiest country what are you doing in government to create such happiness in this country he said it's a lie it's not true government can't raise happiness I so what are you doing and he said government can eliminate the sources of unhappiness now that's a non-trivial distinction why because one of the things that we found over just in the past 25 years of research is that happiness and unhappiness aren't opposites this is not logic chopping which we do for a living around here no no no no no happiness and unhappiness are largely based on emotional states that are processed in different hemispheres of the brain and in point of fact government can't make you happier but in point of fact it can relieve the the the avoidable many of the avoidable sources of unhappiness that inhibit our pursuit of the best life as we want to live it and that's why policy is so critically important so that's why for example you find that all of those studies that show that above $75,000 a year in income people don't get happier no no no no what happens is at relatively you know minimal to low income levels that that unhappiness is avoided because of calorie needs being met and because of Health Care being provided etc etc and because you're not worried all night about your rent under of the circumstances and beyond that it becomes an individual project the collective project is at low levels and on the unhappiness side the individual pro project goes all the way through and it can be on the happiness side and if we don't get that and we don't work together we're going to have public policies that don't help and we're going to have more and more politicians that stand up there and tell us if you vote for me you're going to be happy they're lying is the bottom line because they actually can't do that but we here the Kennedy School can eliminate a lot of the sources of unhappiness that we still find around the world and it's a ve look we're going to go hammer and tongs about what that means what the tax rate should be etc etc etc good good but we can make real progress if we put our minds to it but you know Arthur I mean I think that you so when trying to read this book and trying to you know the questioner uh uh question causes me to think okay the policy implications you know you could imagine a policy implication of this book would be we should pursue policies to incentivize family formation or you could imagine a policy implication of this book to be we should not have anything like a universal basic income because that will disincentivize work why would that be the wrong interpretation because the right way to think about that is that public policy should be in the business of getting rid of the barriers to those things and then helping people be facilitated in their pursuit of these things that's what we really need so in other words I I really don't want a a a a government agency dedicated to family formation or everybody going to church I don't want that it's unconstitutional to begin with but also it's undesirable because it would be counter counterproductive tax break for churches tax breaks for bigger families tax breaks for nonprofit organizations and organizations that actually do social good MH that we on the basis of contributions it's a slightly different area but that is basically getting out of the way of our ability to support these organizations as a society simply not taxing something is not the same thing as subsidizing something and that's a very important distinction both in in in in policy and in practice Yeah but if somebody shows up and says Universal basic income I say bad idea right but but our questioner who sat down would say this is a way we're going to alleviate suffering right and you would say I would say that's not the right way to do it because it actually creates incentives for people to not work and that's a problem because work brings dignity work helps people to understand that they can create value there are better ways to do that if you actually want work to pay more an expansion of the earned income tax credit for example is a much better way to do it and there are all kinds of wonky ways that we make our livings talking about here at the kendi school where you can actually help work pay more and help people work more at the same time or work at least we have for a living we have time for one more question only I I could I could stay here all night go ahead hi Arthur I want to ask how much of loneliness do you think is attributable to a lack of self-connection versus social connection and do you think that loneliness can be a mindset yeah it's a good question and and of course Solitude and isolation are different things you know um this is a distinction that that Henry David thorough made in Walden written 15 miles away from here that Solitude is a beautiful thing as he sat around Walden Pond I will note that his mother was doing his laundry and bringing him dinner every night so um well stylistically it made a lot of sense at least whereas isolation is a different matter and people can be unbelievably isolated even when they're not alone Solitude is something that you can find in that you in point of fact need a lot of times I recommend by the way to all of my students and to all of you that you do a silent ret treat every year you go someplace and and sit someplace in silence for at least 3 days a year wow this will this will solve a multitude of problems and even better if it's guided with respect to your faith or your life philosophy something that gives you a higher sense of transcendence while you're actually doing this it's incredibly important because that will give you the Solitude that you actually need but many many people even though they're surrounded constantly even even in in a family and in a marriage are deeply isolated and that has not to just to do with their mindset that has to do with the quality of their relationships and what they're actually seeking from their relationships and so that said one of the things that I talk about an awful lot is how to improve relationships how to treat them in a way that's as healthy as possible what you do probably the most popular unit of the class that I teach at HBS is about family formation and love about how romantic relationships how we can fall in love and stay in love and and pursue a part parip that lasts each one of us for the rest of our lives that's probably the most important thing that I teach as a matter of fact because if there's one thing you're going to learn that's going to you're going to take with you for the rest of your life and that's going to lead to happiness it's how to not be alone how not to be isolated when you're with your partner thank you for that so I I think we're at the end of our time um one question I might ask you is Harvard a happy place is there any other questions so the um um there's a lot of Happiness here um because I'm looking out and a lot of you have a lot of happiness in your lives Harvard is not an a single unitary organism it's a lot of people doing a lot of things now that doesn't mean that we have a happy culture right now it doesn't mean we have a culture that's fostering happiness right now I believe we don't and I believe that we can I'm actually more optimistic about this place than I've been in the 5 years that I've been here and the reason is because the discomfort that we're feeling as a community is a Spur to our growth it's just incredible I mean if everything is kind of okay that nobody wants to change but look nobody thinks it's okay and so we can change we can you and I have talked about this because by the way if those of you who don't know tar is the editor of the Journal of democracy which is the single most inflecting and important intellectual journal in the study of democracy arguably of all political science this this journal moves ideas and it has for many many years and he's the editor and so we were working on an article that I'm publishing in the Journal of democracy it's coming out very soon and one of the things we were talking about is how do you get an intellectual Community that's happier and you know the answer to that is more diversity of ideas more heresy more daring more Adventure it's funny because you know a lot of people went to Harvard in the 80s and they're like that was the happiest time of my life happiest time of my life you know I met people and I disagreed with people and then we had dinner together it was so great and they come back and they're like what's going on you know what's going on here where everybody's afraid everybody's walking on eggshells where you can't talk about certain ideas because they're too scary and who knows you know what it might mean that's what leads to unhappiness but that's our opportunity is to be this kind of so so tar has this great metaphor that he uses that this place is not a comfy couch this place is a gym where you go to get stronger and you Revel in and you Eno enjoy the the Rough and Tumble of what it actually means and you know not paradoxically I think that actually logically that those are some of the happiest environments I've ever been in people go to the gym and it hurts and it feels good and you enjoy it and you're with your friends and and that's but you told me we should have here and I completely agree with that that's the that's the way back for this institution I'm more confident that I've been since I've been here that we can actually get there and we're going to so Arthur Brooks uh you know happiness pleasure enjoyment me meting satisfaction all of those things I got out of this hour with you and I know our audience did too please join me in thanking Arthur BRS thank you thank you thank you everybody thank youone you

Channel: Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School

Views: 3,406

Keywords: Harvard Institute of Politics, Harvard University

Id: k2xxDW9R_Iw

Length: 74min 45sec (4485 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024